The comments I most appreciate come from ordinary readers who've happened on one of my books at some time of stress in their lives, and who actually credit the book with helping them through a bad time. It's happened a few times in forty years.

Probably all the books I've ever written have been efforts to define the boundaries of humanity.

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

Only towards the end of this process are any of the chapters in fully readable condition, a state of affairs that used to alarm my wife. But Joan's got used to it.

There's a big overlap with the people you meet at the fantasy and science fiction cons.

Mysteries I read for fun, so I will probably never write one, for fear of spoiling the fun.